just a little boulderin'

Well, this post is about a week over due. Regardless, I shall not neglect to proclaim to the world how magnificent a little place called Joshua Tree is... Oh, "WORLD! It's MAGNIFICENT!" There, there is my proclamation.

I admit, my expectations were limited, so perhaps my experience was heightened by this fact. It really is natural anomaly. Upon entering the park, the terrain drastically changes, and we, of course, had our own theories as to how the intricate rock formations came about -- the flood, aliens... well, it really does seem unexplainable. No picture can fully capture being in the presence of this graveyard of boulders. Anyways, I felt similar to a child at an aquarium, fascinated by, yes, rocks.


I make one confession -- that I overestimated my climbing abilities. At the gym I can qualify myself at a beginning V3 climber. So I anticipated hitting every VB to V2 that I encountered. We all were a little overly zealous to get our first climb in and began a V0 climb on the nearest boulder. It came as quite a shock to us when Matt and Jordan found themselves struggling. We disregarded it as a fluke and set out to our next route. V0 again. Too hard of a route again.

Well, it definitely was an immediate soak of humility in our present presumption of our abilities. As our hands got more accustomed to the roughness of the boulders and as Matt and Jordan began to find routes that they could mantle, I found myself a little more confident and was able to attempt 4 or 5 routes and flash three of them... yes, all VB's.



Our trip was quite successful as we left relatively injury-less and all alive (well, I suppose that was more of my concern than of Matt's or Jordan's) and we all felt a little more inspired to head back to the gym to prepare ourselves for our next climb.